Earlier this month, we posted on how to use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia to capture the collective intelligence of your employees and turn them into news feeds for everyone to see. Today we will discuss how you to use social bookmarking to put your firm, organization, or department at the heart of your network of clients, colleagues, or employees.

Sharing bookmarks through del.icio.us provides an easy and low-cost way to keep up a constant stream of valuable information. Some examples are:

• Keep employees aware of tips,tricks, tutorials, workarounds, or reference materials.
• Stay in constant contact with clients by feeding them important developments or identify opportunities and potential hazards.
• Attract prospects and establish your expertise with them.

Since del.icio.us creates newsfeeds (RSS feeds), everyone in your network stays current without the need for update e-mails that might be ignored or trapped in spam filters.

Social bookmarking also allows you to tap the collective wisdom of your network. With del.icio.us, you can invite each member in the group or other colleagues to share their bookmarks with you. Be sure to edit those bookmarks so they fit your purpose or theme. Everyone benefits from having more eyes keeping watch, and more brains thinking of useful and thought-provoking content.

As the fountainhead, you will become firmly established as the hub of your network, and will become indispensable to your clients, employees, and colleagues.

• If you are still not down with RSS, we added a way to get updates through the e-mail with Simply Headlines, a nifty little service that delivers newsfeeds in a newspaper layout to your inbox once a day.
• We also made it easy to save Journal posts to del.icio.us, but better yet...
• ...we are sharing our del.icio.us bookmarks with our readers. Check out what our stable of experts in IT engineering, support, programming, and design are reading on the web. Del.icio.us even turns it into an RSS feed, so you can get updates in your new browser or favorite newsreader.
  

Innovation is back in web browsers!  With the release of Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 in the past couple of weeks, there has been more new ideas in browsers since IE and Netscape squared off "back in the day."

Here is what is being said out in cyberspace about the latest contenders:

• Wired's "A Tale of Two Browsers" is a good comparison article without the fan-boy hype on other side.
• CNet has text and video reviews of both Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7

The press hasn't been all that favorable for IE7 with complaints about security, standards compliance, and installation. Microsoft has also followed Mozilla's lead and created a site for add-ons to IE7.

We would also like to get your take on a statement made in the Wired article:

"...fact is that Firefox 2 and Microsoft IE7 both have support for web standards that is good enough for the vast majority of web content out there."

Are you looking for "good enough" in browsers, or does security or compatibility with enterprise software or custom applications sway your choice of browser in your firm?

Today, Doug Daniel and George Nicholson are giving a seminar on the maturation of virtual computing technologies for the ALA Capital Chapter's Information Services and Technology section. Server rooms of the future will be incorporating virtual machines in addition to physical servers. From the presentation, here are some of the uses for virtual computing:

• Test and development
• Server consolidation
• Production servers
• Remote office
• Disaster recovery
• No more “desktop” servers
• IT agility and responsiveness

Doug and George make the point that forget the hype of huge savings that many virtual computing vendors tout, the real payoff is in the agility and responsiveness that virtual computing affords the IT department.

We will be posting with more from the seminar, so keep checking this blog.

A while ago, we posted about the importance of mock-ups to overcome the lack of imagination most users have when it comes to new ideas and projects. This post at Creating Passionate Users about how reducing fear is the killer app, made us rethink the value of mock-ups.

Mock-ups fill that great unknown in the user’s imagination—and fear of the unknown is one of the greatest sources of anxiety. As professionals comfortable with technology, we sometimes forget the fears our users and customers jave when it comes even to the simplest technologies. Will I be able to understand the product? During training, if I don’t understand it, will I look like a fool in front of my peers. Will the technology project work, and if not, how much will that cost? People fear of being left behind, whether professionally, by the market, or their peers. And they fear of being caught unawares, or being “out of the loop”.

So if reducing fear is the killer app, your users deserve to be mocked much more! Use sketches, diagrams, and wireframes to vanquish that great unknown which is causing your users so much anxiety. If your manager is afraid a technology project won’t work, provide her with a proof-of-concept. Provide hands-on demonstrations to acquaint users to new software. Simply keeping people informed of developments—like the timelines for technology migrations or providing project status—will greatly reduce their anxiety. In fact, they will thank you because they have one less unknown variable to contend with in their busy schedule.

Think your web site is a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo?  Well, General Counsel's across the country use that mumbo jumbo as their primary decision to hire outside counsel according to the recent Annual Chief Legal Officer Survey. Just edging out legal directories like Martindale Hubbell, companies use a law firm's web site to choose outside counsel to represent them over 44 percent of the time. When you add in the 21 percent who used search engines like Google, the law firm's online presence should be its primary marketing focus.

That said, are your areas of expertise and your "value proposition"--in other words, the benefit you offer prospective clients--right on the front page?  Or do you have some self-congratulatory letter from the managing partner or tired and cliched pictures of board rooms and your beautiful, glass enclosed building rather than content written for what prospective clients need? Huh?

The hype-o-meter is twitching recently over porting common desktop apps like word processing and spreadsheets onto the web. EWeek and others have been declaring that web-based applications are coming of age. Google appears to be taking up the standard, leading a host of smaller developers in pushing the envelope of online applications. In fact, I am writing the first draft of this post on Google's "Docs & Spreadsheets ."

So should law and professional services firms head online for word processing?

Not quite yet. But for e-mail, many firms are already using Outlook Web Access (OWA), a web-based application. In fact, e-mail went web way back with Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Web-based apps tend to be more focused and have less features, largely because of the technical hurdles they face being online. Inline spell checking, drag and drop, and tracking changes are there, but forget mail-merging, if you care. This simplicity has won many adherents frustrated by how complicated desktop word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications have become. Online apps play to their strength--collaboration--where anyone with a web browser and the right privileges can edit, update, or otherwise provide feedback on a document. That same opennes, however, should scare the briefs off of any lawyer worth her salt.

But the road ahead holds a lot of promise. We envision a hyrbid scenario where apps reside on a firm's intranet, rather than the big-bad World Wide Web. Some of the advantages of online apps include:

• Easier deployment and seamless upgrades.
• Less expensive equipment on the desktop.
  
• Simpler licensing.
• Less configuration for managed environments.
• Built-in DMS: the documents are natively on the network rather than a local drive.
• RSS integration for new documents, updates, and document revisions.
  
• Microformats to reuse chunks of information rather than whole documents.

Under such an environment, the servers and connection speeds become critical. What is interesting, if web-based applications take off, it will mean that the pendulum will  have swung back toward a variant of the mainframe/terminal model of old.

With the upcoming launch of Windows Vista, the operating system replacement for XP, here is a sampling of news and opinion from around the web.

• Vista will reportedly have highly restrictive, some say draconian, licensing restrictions: a one-time, and one time only, transfer of the license to another device, but you can run the same copy virtually on the same machine.
• MS will also be taking a hard line against piracy, reportedly crippling machines with unauthorized versions of Vista. This presents a problem, since there are complaints that its watchdog program, Windows Genuine Advantage, produces too many false positives
• A few people have put together a wiki of third-party applications that are not working or have significant issues in Vista RC2; Although Microsoft’s Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 may be a workaround for legacy systems, if you are brave enough or have mad skillz.
• Then there are the many existential musings about whether Vista is worth the upgrade, including Great Britain's The Inquirier, and from Windows evangelist Paul Thurrott. That leaves some to ponder where is the business case is for upgrading?

We will weigh in on the Vista upgrade issue soon, but give us your thoughts in the comments.

We are still ironing out some of the details so the formal announcement hasn't gone out yet, but we can let you know of a new seminar. SAGE’s Doug Daniel will be giving an overview of virtualization technologies for the Information Services and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter on October 25 from Noon to 2:00 PM. 

Doug will guide attendees through the virtual computing landscape. He will provide an overview of the technology and its applications, and provide a survey of configurations, products, and platforms. Furthermore, he will share his insights into the best applications of virtualization, and the various platforms and software currently in the market. Doug will delve into the costs and benefits of the technology, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on his experience, Doug will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar will cover:

• What is virtualization? Common configurations, products, hardware platforms and system requirements.
• Uses for virtualization, including development, consolidation, disaster recovery, etc.
• Pros and cons of virtual server environments
• Maximizing performance in virtual computing
• Myths and realities regarding the economics of virtualization
• Real costs of going virtual for firms of various sizes
• Complementary technologies for virtual server rooms like SANs, and remote power control.

The venue is still not set, but will likely be hosted at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP office in Washington, DC. For more information, or if you are interested in registering, e-mail Peter von Elling at SAGE, or Kenny Mitchell at Wilkinson Barker Knauer.

By the end of the year, SAGE will be making available Sentinel to all OnSight clients, letting them view the status of their network and us as we perform daily checks on their servers. OnSight clients will have their own user names and passwords and can see everything SAGE engineers and managers can see for their own network. This provides IT managers and firm administrators the means to monitor their network and our performance.

We don't mind the accountability that comes with the transparency Sentinel provides to our OnSight customers. When managing a firm's network, we have the responsibility for its continuous operation and optimum performance, and our customers need to to have confidence that is indeed happening. The way we look at it, providing Sentinel to customers gives them that assurance, which translates to peace of mind that their network is in good hands. Lastly, the more eyes present to spot problems whenever and where ever they may occur is never a bad thing.

Here is our inaugural entry into weekly survey of web sites: Surf's up. We start off this week with a community driven anti-phishing site, Phish Tank (http://www.phishtank.com/). Phish Tank is an online database of phishing sites that allows readers to submit entries and verify other readers entries. Best of all, they provide an API so developers and programmers can build applications using their database.

For those trying to tweak as much performance out of Windows XP to avoid an upgrade to Vista, this blog has a list of XP performance tweaks. Word of caution, some of those tweaks may not be advisable in a managed environment.  And speaking of avoiding an upgrade to Vista, XP Myths explodes some common myths about Windows XP concerning performance, reliability, minimum system requirements, and more. The best part of the page, however, is the section on bad tweaks that are supposed to improve performance but actually don't.

SAGE President George Nicholson and Creative Director Peter von Elling are speaking at the Association of Legal Administrators Region 2 Conference on Friday, October 27, 2006 in Louisville, KY. The session, "Blogging: The Best Marketing You Aren't Doing" will cover the basics of blogging for those new to the format, and focus exclusively on law blogs. We will discuss the tension between the free-flowing, run-it-up-the-flag-pole-and-see-who-salutes nature of blogging and the desire many firms have to carefully script all communication with clients and prospects.  Also, we will discuss the new landscape of law firm marketing in the age of participatory web sites, where it's important to be Digged, be Del.icio.us, and have those RSS feeds hit newsreaders.

If you are attending, please come hear George and Peter speak and then meet them afterwards. We will be providing sneak previews here on our blog before the Conference, and more from the presenation afterward.

Sharing bookmarked web sites within an organization can be tremendously valuable because it unleashes the collective wisdom of its people. Each person probably has a few gem web sites or pages that others would find very useful. Unfortunately, those gems are locked up in each person’s web browser.

Using the web service Del.icio.us, however, those bookmarks are freed from the browser and can be shared quickly and easily across the firm. Those shared bookmarks are then turned into RSS feeds that can be easily distributed.

Here’s an example. An employee finds a news article on a web page that discusses developments in your market. Using the Del.ico.us extension for either the Internet Explorer or Firefox browser, she bookmarks the page by clicking on a button. Up pops a dialogue box where the employee adds tags and summary information about the bookmark, and also adds it to the company’s master Del.icio.us account. Over the course of the day, 12 new bookmarks are added by various employees to the master account.

Employees (or even clients) can stay abreast of these new bookmarks through the RSS feed coming Del.icio.us, either in their newsreader, the firm’s intranet, portal or website, or to an extranet like MindPort. Even better, each tag within an account has its own RSS feed, so employees can focus on specific issues, news or client information. For instance, they can subscribe to the feed on a particular competitor to monitor its moves in the market.

This is win-win for everyone. The employee benefits because bookmarks are available wherever there is Internet access—from the office, home, or on the road. Sites and pages that they may have overlooked were spotted by someone else’s eagle eyes. Because sharing bookmarks are so simple, the organization benefits because all its employees scour the web on a wide variety of topics. Tags are a flexible organizational tool compared to folders, and can provide very targeted information.

In upcoming posts, we will explore other novel uses of RSS, such as re-mixing RSS feeds and using them to share with your communities of employees, clients, and potential clients.